How to Find Pancakes in Prison

Fate has a weird sense of humor.  And a weak spot for southern comfort food. 

Mike and I were in Knoxville on a business trip last week.  In the cozy recesses of the Doubletree hotel, we reflected on the upscale dinner we'd just had with a colleague, overlooking a lake, with miso glazes and such.

"Hell, I would have been just as happy with pancakes," Mike said.

"Yes," I agreed.  "Pancakes would be damn good."

The hour was advancing.  This combined with the breakfast topic triggered memories of late-night trips to Waffle House.  I hadn’t been to the House since high school, and just the thought of all that syrup and butter made my stomach do the Carlton dance in anticipation.  Then the moment passed.  I forgot all about pancakes.  Insignificant as this seemed, our little discussion had flipped the switch to fortune's roller-coaster, its track leading through zero-gravity pretzel loops of providence and despair.

24 hours later, we were on our way back from an aborted trip to McGhee-Tyson airport.  The DC snow storm had turned the runways into a mess.  Our quick and dirty business trip had become a real-life version of the Prisoner: no clear boundaries prevented our escape, yet something intangible – blurry letters on a departure screen – trapped us.

The involvement of mysterious forces was clear when we showed up to our new hotel: the Royal Extended Stay.  Trippy – we were, like, on an extended stay.  And ironic – among its majestic traits, our royal abode had tiny ground floor rooms with curtains stuck half open so that various pimps and dislocated families could stroll by and see me in my underwear.  Nice, too, was the brackish outdoor pool that no one had bothered to drain three months into winter and the stains of joy on the sheets.

Then we saw it.  A Waffle House.  Right across the street.  It hit us: we had caused that snow storm.  Fate had stepped in to accommodate our pancake lust.  A timely return to DC was what we thought we wanted.  Fate knew better.

We’d already had dinner, but Waffle House sells itself as the place where you can enjoy a meal at any hour – even, we wondered, the hour after your last meal?  The jukebox, barstools and country bumpkin waitress were the right setting for a meal as unpretentious as pancakes.

“Dude, where’s the pancakes?” Mike said, studying the menu.  Sensing distress, Genie the waitress pointed to the name on the menu: “Waffle House,” she said slowly, so we could understand.  “We ain’t got no hot cakes here, fellers.”

Somehow – probably by being drunk whenever I was there – I had misremembered pancakes at Waffle House.  They specialize in the pancake’s crispier cousin.  Actually, less special and crispy, more stale and hard, even when coated with syrup.  The Waffle House’s waffles were like sticky old rice cakes.  You could build a nice waffle house with them.

Waffle House menu - what's missing from this picture?

Brick House

What was our purpose here outside Knoxville at a hooker hotel with no pancakes?  Was life just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and unsatisfied appetites?

“Fuuuuuuck me,” Mike summarized.

As we left, Mike noted a red sign a few hundred yards down the desolate stretch of highway.  “Shoney’s got any breakfast?”  I’d been to Shoney’s once and only recalled a soup and sandwich combo. The only other lights came from the hotel and a Ken Joe convenience store.  There was a king of this little piece of meth lab country, and his name was Ken Joe.

Despite my depression, I fell asleep.  Until 6:03 a.m.  That’s when U.S. Airways, grabbing a chance to piss on the wounded, woke me with an automated phone call chirpily announcing that our new flight had been delayed.

I went back to bed and dreamed I was sleeping outside by the ice-chip filled pool, but happily stuffed inside a full-body pancake blanket.  When I got up, I looked up Shoney’s on my blackberry and dialed.

“Hi, do you have pancakes?” I asked.

Silence.  “Uuuummmmm, yeah,” the guy said.  “Our pancakes are what made us famous!”

Fifteen minutes later, Mike and I were by the side of the highway running to Shoney’s, barely noticing the thick underbrush to our knees or the headwind whipped up by the oncoming tractor trailers.

Inside, we found a breakfast buffet surrounded by round orange folk.  Breaking the UT dress code, we inspected the buffet.  Mike’s lower lip trembled.  I kicked the buffet.  What we were looking at was simply impossible.  No pancakes.

They had everything else – apple fritters, salad with a variety of toppings, eggs, French toast, chicken nuggets (chicken nuggets?) – except the very flapjacks we craved. 

I kicked this

“This is convict food,” Mike barked as we sat down.  “I feel like we’re all cats eating from the same cat bowl.”

He had a crazy look in his eye like he was about to tear the place apart. 

I tried to distract him.  “Try the chicken nuggets,” I said.  “They’re amazing.”  It was true – they were hot and incredibly moist.

“If it wasn’t 9:30 in the morning, I would,” he snapped, then went back to eyeing daggers at the buffet.

Our waitress came over.  Fearing for her safety, I signaled for her to stay away, but to no avail.

“Ma’am,” Mike said, “we were told over the phone that you had pancakes!”  The other customers looked over at our table.  The room was still.

She furrowed her brow and put a hand on her hip.  Then she smiled.  “Well … of course we have pancakes.  We just don’t put them on the buffet because they dry out!”

Finally, we had our pancakes.  They were rich.  They were creamy.  They had the pillowy texture of marshmellows and the perfume of an edible angel.  They were golden like the sunlight streaming in.

The end of the rainbow

Mike called the airline.  Our plane was finally on the way from DC.  Just then, a 300 pound pancake lover settled into the booth behind me.  The seat groaned loudly.  It sounded like a prison door swung open.

Brown Bag Opening Up on Eye Street

I heard a new Brown Bag location is opening next week at 1625 Eye Street NW.  You can brown bag it on Eye Street starting Thursday, February 3.  They'll be celebrating on Thursday with free pastries, muffins and Swing's coffee.

Yet another successful riff on the Chipotle model, Brown Bag lets you play with fresh, healthy ingredients as you design your own meal, choosing from an omelet, salad, sandwich or noodle bowl.  They make their own soups, dressings and various spreads in-house every day.

Brown Bag first opened in 2002 in Bethesda and has expanded in recent years to 14th and 18th Street in DC and Arlington.  Specialty salad bowls include bayou chicken caesar and cowboy steak.  Unfortunately there are no forties on the menu.

VillageVines Discount for Woo Lae Oak

Speak of the devil – just last week I reviewed Woo Lae Oak in Soho, and this week I learned that VillageVines is offering 30 percent off your bill.  If you’re in the City, this place is a contemporary spin on traditional Korean food that’s not to be missed.  People sometimes complain about Woo being overpriced – not when VV is factored into the equation.

Top Chef's All-Star Comeback

The popular tv show has a predictable life cycle. 

A show peaks when it gets so trendy that people start throwing theme parties based on it.  This has officially happened when eHow adds an entry for “how to throw a [insert show] party”.

Shortly afterwards, a few people who didn’t get invited to all these parties make videos parodying stupid aspects of the show.  This is a great way for social circle rejects to let everyone know they’re cooler than the party-throwers they got dissed by. 

The videos are fun to watch.  They also murder the show they're making fun of.  After you watch them, all of the show’s over-the-top tics that somehow didn’t bother you before, bother you now.  Suddenly, your eyes start rolling whenever Don Draper checks out his secretary’s ass.  The desire to punch Hurley in the forehead whenever he says “dude” becomes intense.  Tolerating Tim Gunn’s nasal voice now requires a whole package of Nauzene chewables.   

When at least three satires ascend to “this week’s most viewed” on youtube, you know your favorite show is going down the tube.

Top Chef recently got to this stage after a string of excellent seasons.  A lot of good TC satires began appearing on youtube.  The best of them was probably Top Cook, in which all the chefs and contestants are zoo animals.  The animals sometimes kill and cook each other in preparing dishes for the judges table.  Noticing that the judges are perfectly okay with this, the monkey wonders, “Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the jaguar murdered the fuc*ing opossum?” 

Our wise monkey friend nails Top Chef’s most annoying trait: the show is more about contestants fighting with each other than the food.  The problem was painfully obvious during last season’s beltway bitchfest.  Painful enough that viewership dipped 27 percent.   

Shows like Top Chef rarely come back after falling victim to the satire effect, so I was skeptical about the title of this season’s Top Chef: “Sometimes They Come Back.”  Of course, the title was supposed to refer to former “all-star” contestants returning to the show, but after the DC debacle, it was hard to ignore the double meaning.   

Another reason for skepticism: all-star casts are never about revitalizing a show.  They’re about squeezing whatever’s left out of a concept that’s past its prime, like snatching organs from a guy on his death bed for the black market.  A la Road Rules All Stars.  Or the “best memories” episodes of Family Ties.

And yet, holy crap: All-Star Top Chef could be the best season we’ve seen so far.  The show brought back just the right mix of contestants for achieving balance between the substance of good food and the thrills of drama.  We’ve been treated to huge talents like Richard Blaise and Tiffany Derry, goofy talents like Antonio, cool villains like Dale Talde, and lame villains like Marcel.  Top Chef needed a fresh angle that would inspire surprising new challenges.  The all-star format has done just that, providing classic moments like when the contestants were told to cook with the ingredients that got them kicked off previous seasons.  At the same time, they were careful not to scrap elements that still work, like the ever-effective Restaurant Wars.

Now if only they would replace Padma with Chelsea Handler, author of the memoir “Are You There, Vodka?  It’s Me, Chelsea.”  I'm not sure what all that Absolut has done to her palate, but one thing's for sure: you can't parody someone who earns a living parodying herself.

Agora Unveils Unlimited Pre-Fixed Brunch Menu

Write-up from Lindley Thornburg of Heather Freeman:

Washington, DC (January 20, 2011)--- Agora located in the heart of Dupont Circle at 1527 17^th Street, NW is pleased to debut a new endless brunch menu, complimented by a bottomless supply of rail cocktails, available both Saturday and Sunday.  This special excess brunch offering begins Saturday, January 15^th, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with tempting small plates prepared by Executive Chef Ghassan Jarrouj.  Guests are invited to order multiple servings of any of the featured Mediterranean inspired dishes for an all-inclusive priced of $29.95 per person (excluding tax and gratuity) and sip on their favorite featured morning libation.

The pre-fixed brunch menu includes an assortment of Spreads including Htipiti, roasted peppers, feta, thyme and olive oil, as well as a Cheese & Cure section, with offerings such as the Kașar, from Kars, Turkey, which is an aged medium-hard pale yellow, sheep milk cheese, served with orange marmalade.  A variety of salads are on the menu including the Beet Salad with lemon mashed potatoes, garlic, orange, red beets, savory herb, onion, lemon vinaigrette, and the Piyaz, white beans, red and green peppers, parsley, dill, scallions, red onions, black olives, crushed red peppers, vinegar and lemon juice.

Cold Meze options are perfect for enjoying this winter at Agora like the Dolmades, Swiss chard stuffed with pine nuts and tomatoes, or the Patlıcan Közleme, charcoal smoked eggplant, green and red peppers, olive oil, garlic, parsley, dill.

Then it is on to experiencing the Eggs & More section of the menu at Agora.  Don’t miss the French Toast, challah bread dipped with egg-batter dusted with confections sugar served with maple syrup; Pastirma Egg Benedicts, two poached eggs with cured loin of beef topped with traditional Hollandaise sauce on English muffin, or the Cilbir, two poached eggs topped with yogurt, sumac and spice oil.  Agora’s homemade flatbreads will also served to complement the meal such as the Lahmacun, wood-fired Turkish flat bread topped with ground beef, lamb, tomatoes and parsley.  Brunch offerings can also be ordered a la carte for a light bite for those with smaller appetites and prices range from $5 to $9 for featured dishes.

Agora also offers a variety of bottomless drink specials on all rail spirits including vodka, gin, rum, and tequila (included in the $29.95 price) ideal for leisurely weekend dining.  Signature weekend brunch such as Mimosas, Bloody Mary and Champagne are also available.

Agora, which means “gathering place” in Greek brings authentic Turkish cuisine to the heart of Dupont and is designed to be a Mediterranean Oasis.  In addition to its main dining room, Agora has plans later this summer to open a second floor addition with private seating for up to 48 guests.  During the spring and summer seasons, additional seating is available as the sidewalk café at Agora can accommodate 34 guests for both the lunch and dinner service.  For more information, please call (202) 332-6767 or visit the website at www.agoradc.net.

Woo Lae Oak in Soho

Out with the old, in with the Woo.  As first-generation Korean entrepreneurs retire, traditional Korean restaurants – minimalist, unaccommodating, family-recipe-centric – give way to places like Woo Lae Oak in Soho.  Most second-gen places piss off parents by fusing Korean with other cuisines.  Woo Lae Oak keeps its Korean identity mostly intact.  The twist is that Woo incorporates modern touches – both culinary and aesthetic – that you’d expect to find at a New American restaurant.  Dark marble.  Trendy soy wax candles straight out of a Crate & Barrel catalog.  Open kitchen.  Dining spaces long and narrow like a Victorian sitting room.  Not the hallmarks of your pop’s Korean bbq joint.  The meats thrown on the grill also stray from the script, and deliver: the tongue cooks crisp and sweet, the sashimi grade salmon light and smoky.  Dishes like the garlicky black cod and soy chili pork ribs suggest mainstream potential, but the Korean pepper stuffed with whitefish is so spicy you know the chef is his own man.  And the kitchen resists the temptation to cram kimchi into every dish, opting for subtler Korean influences like sesame and ginger.  On the other hand, some contemporary touches don’t work.  The waiters speak English, but they don’t know much about Korean food or how long to barbecue it.  The four little side dishes, provided only if you get bbq, give banchan a bad name.  The lettuce wraps, or ssam, omit garlic and peppers.  Not all aspects of Woo Lae Oak please the modern man.  Unlike retired Korean restaurateurs, he hopes they get it right.

eel broiled in sweet soy marinade served over sizzling river stones

lightly battered korean green pepper stuffed with whitefish filet served with a spicy kimchi sauce

authentic Korean barbecue - sliced beef tongue

Atlantic salmon

 black cod and daikon simmered in a spicy garlic soy reduction

slowly roasted baby pork ribs basted in a tangy soy and chili glaze

More "What is THAT?" Moments at Legend's in Chelsea

Birds-eye chilies float menacingly in our fish soup.  The sauce on my sliced conch has strange properties that numb my lips and tongue.  When I get the hankering, I spit frog bones.

My parents stare down the ends of their utensils before taking little bites.  Sometimes they arch their eyebrows in shock, and other times they nod approvingly.  Mostly, the eyebrow thing.

Each night my parents come to Legend's in Chelsea is the last night, or so they say.  Their visits are filled with extremes, disasters sandwiching moments of greatness.  The end of the meal always feels like the closing credits of a soap opera, the embattled characters unsure how happiness will ever be theirs.  Why do relationships have to be so hard?

My dad scrutinizes a fillet of catfish that has been boiled into a paranormal shape.  "This tastes creepy," he says, "and it looks like a matzoh ball." 

A little whilte later, my mom freezes.  Fear renders her immobile for three full seconds, then she reaches for her napkin and brings it to her mouth very slowly, as if defusing a bomb.  The bomb, in this case, is braised frog.  Into the napkin it goes.  We all sigh in relief.  She's alive.  "There's big pieces of bones in this!"

I don't sweat the bones.  The meat is rich, and the sauce is smoky, salty, light and filled with pickled peppers.  Chefs in the Sichuan Province use salt from the wells of Zingong to do their pickling.  The pure, never bitter finish of the peppers at Legend's suggests that they enjoy a Zingong hookup.

At the table to our left, two scruffy, plaided-out guys talk theater between pepper-filled bites and big gulps of ice water.  When the waiter brings us the sliced conch in chili sauce, they stop and look over.  "We have two questions," one guy says.  "What is that!  And, do you know who wrote Our Town?" 

I say, "Conch!" as I take my first bite.  It's so damn good that I forget the second question.  Much of the food you get at Legend's is reddish and oily, but the conch sauce is pale and light.  It leaves my mouth with just the right amount of ma, or the tingly numbness caused by Sichuan peppercorns, balanced masterfully with a few dollops of pesto.

My parents finish off the conch and soup.  Their antipathy for the frog is boundless.  After the trial-and-error of six visits, though, we're polishing up the ground rules for a satisfying meal at Legend's: only order one dish with the tingly peppercorns or you'll feel like a Chinaman has suckerpunched you in the kisser; go heavy on the pickled peppers; and, when in doubt, look to the cold appetizers, the best section of the menu.

"I think this is the end of the road for this place," my dad says.  I've heard it before - we'll be back.

I Like Sarah Palin?

A couple nights ago, for the first time, I watched Sarah Palin’s Alaska on TLC.  I hoped the show might be as hysterical as her tv interviews.  Of course, it wasn’t – everything was edited to make her intelligence seem slightly above average.  Laughing with Sarah is way less fun than laughing at Sarah.  The show did, however, inspire some soul searching. 

Sarah spends most of the episode cavorting around Bristol Bay, chopping down trees, climbing foothills and backslapping “hearty hardcore Alaskans.”  All of this did at least make me wonder whether Palin’s appreciation of nature, genuine interest in the common man and self-reliant attitude qualify her to be president of a small hiking gear store in 2012.  

The show took an interesting turn when she was shown chopping a just-hooked salmon for the purpose of making fish head stew.  I watched Palin’s face closely during this scene, hoping to glimpse true feelings of disgust underneath the mask of backwoods bravado.  I saw nothing of the sort.  Fish guts spilled.  A zoom-in on the fish head revealed a bloody mess.  She shrieked with joy.  Sarah was in heaven.

I sat up on my couch.  Sarah Palin was adventurous eater.  I lost my focus on what was once a comprehendible world.  My hatred for Sarah as a political figure remained complete.  And yet, in that moment, I fell in love with her as an eater. 

Adventurous eating is key to my identity.  It’s a trait I search out and encourage in others.  If I saw anyone else in the woods salivating over a bloody fish corpse, I would initiate friendship with that person immediately.  So, after accounting for her commendable palate and her ass-backwards politics, was I a fan of Sarah Palin?  Which of the two variables in the likeability equation counts more?

Sorry, Sarah – after a full viewing of your show, I decided I still hate you, bloody fish head and all.  As I watched, I was also reading on my iPhone about Sarah’s crosshairs trained on Rep. Giffords’ district two months after the 2010 election.  That didn’t help.  And, now that I think about it, I’m not so sure about her eating resume.  Eating fish head stew might not qualify Palin as adventurous after all.  If she grew up on a steady diet of the stuff, what’s the big deal?  And, please, prove me wrong, but it’s hard to picture her hanging out in a lot of exotic ethnic restaurants.  Plus, based on her criticism of Michelle Obama’s fight against childhood obesity, she seems to think kids should have lots of cookies and cake, possibly in front of the tv so they can watch Sarah pursue all the fun outdoors activities they’re too fat to do themselves. 

Getting Ready for Restaurant Week

It's time for DC's winter restaurant week.  From January 17-23, about 200 restaurants across metro DC will bring it with multi-course menus at special prices.  Check out the participating restaurants at DC Foodies.

Top 5 New Year's Resolutions for D.C.'s Food Scene

I think people can be pretty selfish with their new year’s resolutions. The list goes on and on – you need to move out of your dumpster, stop losing at chess to your four-year-old, use more deodorant, etc. These are all great ideas, but what’s with all the “me” talk? Personally, I like to make my new year’s resolutions for other people, especially when it’s not requested.

Sometimes I do this on behalf of entire cities. For example, DC, you have a really cool food scene, but who couldn’t use some self-improvement? So check out the top 5 new year’s resolutions I went to the trouble of making for you. Reading them is a lot easier than going on Dr. Phil, right? Don’t give me that look, DC. Where are you going? You’re welcome, ungrateful prick.


1. The downtown area needs to add a solid, traditional Korean restaurant. Don’t get me wrong – I love the bad-ass make-your-own bibimbap of Rice Bar and the interesting modern approach taken by Mandu. Both have their merits. Neither provides the unadulterated funk and uncontrived charisma of hardcore Korean restaurants in Annandale like To Sok Jip and Annangol. With the departure of the Korean cowboy hangout that was Yee Hwa, you need a true-up Korean joint more than ever, DC.
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2. Rasika and a handful of other sit-down restaurants that serve awesome street food should throw their hats into the food truck ring. DC: But Matt, introducing big successful restaurants like Rasika into the mix would be unfair to the minimally resourced artistic types who currently start most of our food trucks. High-powered restaurants would outcompete and kill off the grassroots culinary creativity that makes our food carts so cool. Me: Good point. Now shut up and imagine being able to slam Rasika's palak chaat whenever you want to just by following tweets from the Rasik-car.
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3. DC, one of your locally owned supermarkets needs to get innovative and put a garden on its rooftop. Yeah, it costs a lot to retrofit rooftops to support the weight of a garden. What are the advantages? How about an overnight assault on center stage of the fresh produce movement? If you don’t believe me, Google a small London supermarket called Budgens and see how much sweet press they got for building their rooftop garden. Plus, in case you’re some tree hugger type who thinks there's more to life than profit margin, you’d be helping the environment.
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4. DC, I love you, but you can be kind of a poser sometimes. If you really want to climb Esquire’s list of Top Restaurant Cities – and I know that you do, you ambitious son of a bitch – maybe it’s time to stop trying to beat the cities ranked ahead of you at their own game. That’s right, 2011 is the year we see a new restaurant that specializes in DC area cuisine. So … what is that, exactly? The hell if I know. Do a little introspection. Maybe focus on Maryland seafood, Virginia ham, half-smokes, a riff on Ben’s Chili Bowl, and some Ethiopian dishes – because you have an assload of Ethiopian restaurants. And be cheesy and name your new restaurant and your dishes after monuments, Hall of Famers and corrupt politicians. There’s nothing you can’t you do with names like Harmon Killebrew and Marion Berry. 
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5. How about an adventurous eating restaurant? If you can support a place like Serbian Crown that serves lion, wild boar, and emu, then why not go all out and start a restaurant entirely focused on exotica? You can capitalize on the momentum of the Gastronauts, tapping into a niche of eaters whose numbers and passion are presently overlooked by the marketplace. Food forecasters (Gastradamuses?) are predicting that offal is going to be the it trend of 2011, so get ahead of the curve. Just watch some Bizarre Foods with your trusty notepad and steal some of Andy Zimmern’s crazy ideas. Hell, make Zimmern your executive chef. Just keep him tucked away in the kitchen because ever since I noticed how much he looks like Uncle Fester he kind of freaks me out.

Any other resolutions we should make for DC?

Country Cajorean at Mokomandy in Sterling

Pic credit: Washingtonian

I’ve got some news.  Sit down first.  Here, take this lemon tea.  Ready?  A cool restaurant has opened in Sterling. 

That’s Sterling, Virginia – a land of plenty of boredom.  The grand tour includes large farms with many cows, 18-hole golf courses, and soulless corporate restaurants where food fantasies go to die.  The climax?  Dulles airport.  Part of it.

And, as of August, Mokomandy.  Around the corner from the Olive Garden, it mixes Korean and Cajun, just like its owner, Thaddeus Young, the offspring of a Korean-American father and Cajun mom.  Mo stands for modern, Ko for Korean, and Mandy is the Cajun mom.  Given Mokomandy’s fusion theme, the name could also be a homophone for the 1980s sitcom that fused alien and human.  But Thaddeus hopes his show runs more than four seasons, and his menu brings together boudin, kimchi, bulgogi and jumbalaya like no other restaurant in the world.  Of course, no other restaurant has tried it.

                                                       Mokomandy cracklins

The concept must be a jolt for this especially quiet part of Loudoun County.  How’s the execution?  The appetizers, Korean side dishes called banchan, are modernized and infused with unbeatable Cajun foods like choucroute and cracklins.  But the kimchi and “firecracker” carrots are bland.  And they charge $2 per side dish.  That’s an indignity unheard of at Korean restaurants, where multiple rounds of banchan are always on the house.

Gator croquettes

Ssam with purple rice and vegetables

Foie Gras dumplings

Skip the banchan and go straight to the small plates.  The gator croquettes pack big pieces of gator.  The ssam incorporates traditional Korean ingredients, but neatly packages them in crisp cups of lettuce, just like my own ssam wraps, except that mine look like a Christmas present opened violently by a greedy two-year old.  The foie gras dumplings are salty combos of seared foie gras, braised duck, sesame, radishes, and house-made plum sauce – damn good, although I don’t detect anything especially Korean or Cajun going on here.   

The medium plates are entrée-sized.  The wild boar bowl is really just a bibimbap – the Korean mixed rice dish – but with wild boar.  And a sweet potato chip shoots out the top, lighting up three sheets of seaweed.  It's like an abstract forest fire.  They go too light on the gochujang sauce, but I didn’t care.  This bap has such cool aesthetics, it gives a halo effect.

Wild boar bowl

                                                          Duck gumbo

                                                           BBQ shrimp salad

The duck gumbo brings together braised duck, house-made smoked pork sausage and Cajun-roux.  Pescatarians mostly strike out at meat-focused Mokomandy, but Marcy liked her bbq shrimp salad, with croutons, Louisiana Italian dressing, remoulade, and crispy fried onions.

Large plates like Korean pot roast (beef, sesame, tamari, and root vegetables), Cajun Court bouillon stew (fish of the day, trinity, rice and pickled jalapeno hushpuppies) and poutine (sausage, bacon, gravy, cheese curds and fries) will require future research.  We ran out of room.

One frustrating thing about Mokomandy is that, except for the Korean choucroute, Korean and Cajun foods are plated shoulder-to-shoulder, rather than blended.  The jumbalaya, for example, goes unjumbled; it rejects foreign but complementary ingredients like kimchi and tofu.  I look at the menu items like a kid at a set of oil paints.  I want to chuck a few of them at a canvas and see what sticks.  “It’s not a true fusion,” Thaddeus has said. 
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But it’s close enough, as suggested this past New Year's Eve, when a packed house of mostly Sterling residents chose Mokomandy as the venue for fusing 2010 and 2011.  And the décor, once you’ve escaped the strip mall outside, is clean and bright.  If the Cheesecake Factory and farm animals aren’t enough to lure you to Sterling, the graceful cooking at Mokomandy is worth a drive. 

701 Restaurant Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

Write-up from Heather Freeman:

Standouts from Chef Witt’s $20 lunch offering include Chestnut and Mushroom Soup with Quince and Tarragon; House-made Pork and Cheddar Sausage with Beer Braised Cabbage; Grilled Shrimp with Anson Mill Grits, Spiced Tomato Sauce and Escarole, as well as Crispy Duck Confit with Cannellini Beans, Rose Gold Potatoes and Plum Compote.  For the perfect ending, Pastry Chef Melanie Parker will create mouthwatering delights such as Mocha Crème Brulee with Coffee Cake Croutons and Seasonal Sorbet with Winter Fruit Medley.

Also during the month of January, Chef Parker will be adding a featured Warm Lemon Poppy Seed Birthday Cake with Saffron Citrus Salad and Marsala Ice Cream to the menu, available during both lunch and dinner service and priced at $10.  Guests ordering the cake as their dessert option will be treated to a complimentary glass of sparking wine. 

Located in Washington, D.C.’s hip Penn Quarter, 701 is conveniently situated just steps from The White House and Capitol Hill at 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.  For more information, please call (202) 393-0701 or visit the website at www.701restaurant.com.

Washington, D.C – Ashok Bajaj’s Penn Quarter landmark restaurant, 701 will celebrate its 20^th anniversary during the month of January 2011 with special promotions to honor this milestone occasion.  Executive Chef Ed Witt will feature a three-course prix fixed lunch for $20 and 701 will also introduce a new “Big 20” cocktail crafted by mixologist Ric Newton.  This new libation serves two and is made from a combination of Old Overholt Rye Whiskey, Strega, Honey Lemon Water, and Allspice Dram garnished with star anise.  “Big 20” is priced at $20 for two in keeping with the anniversary or can be ordered as a single serving for $10.